Ghosts That We Knew
by Eienvine
Summary: Eliza is coming to terms with her past and her future, and Henry is going to be at her side every step of the way.


AN: I do intend to eventually write a second chapter to this, but it also stands on its own as a one-shot.

. . . . . .

Henry is in the middle of a pleasant dream about reorganizing his filing cabinet when a pounding on his front door jars him from his sleep. He turns over with a groan, ready to get well and thoroughly indignant, but then his eyes fall on his bedside alarm clock: it's only 11:07. He supposes 11 o'clock on a Friday evening isn't the most unreasonable time for someone to come calling. And anyway, now that he's a little more awake, he recognizes that knock, and he can't fight the smile that comes to his face as he slips into his favorite warm slippers and puts on his robe, pulling the sleeve carefully over the cast on his right arm.

"Eliza," he says, pulling open the front door, ready to teasingly scold her for coming by so late. But the smile falls from his face and the words die on his tongue when he sees his closest friend has been crying. "Eliza?" he repeats, more uncertainly.

She swipes at her nose with a balled-up tissue. "Can I come in?" she asks.

"Of course." Henry moves aside to let her in, berating himself for not having asked her in immediately, and follows her to the sofa. She must have been getting ready for bed when she decided to come over because she's in sweat pants and a ratty t-shirt and glasses (does she wear glasses now? This is news to him), with her hair piled messily on top of her head, and he's never told her this but he likes her best this way; at work and out on the town, she wears her short skirts and and her high heels and her makeup like armor, meant to keep everyone from seeing the real her, but every now and then he gets to see her like this and he loves it.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" he asks, to make up for not asking her in, but she shakes her head. He hesitates, hovering at the edge of the sofa, and then seats himself carefully next to but not touching her. He's not uncomfortable with touching her—in fact she's the only person in his life that he's comfortable with touching—but she's obviously upset and he's so bad at knowing how to respond in situations like this.

"Sorry to barge in," Eliza says, eyes fixed on the floor. "I just didn't know where else to go. I kinda stormed out of my apartment and now I can't go back."

"Freddy?" Henry guesses. She nods and he finds his good hand clenching into a fist. He's never liked Freddy, never thought he was good enough for Eliza, never thought that the man's intentions were sincere, but he's tried to keep those thoughts hidden because it's Eliza's choice who she dates—that and the fact that Freddy has seemed differently lately, like he genuinely cares for Eliza and is trying to be a good boyfriend. But if he has made Eliza cry then Henry is seriously going to . . . write the man a very strongly worded letter.

"We broke up," Eliza says, and Henry's stomach does a funny little flip at that. "I'm actually really glad it happened, but we had a big fight, and . . ." She slides her fingers under the edge of her glasses to wipe at her tears. "#crybaby," she laughs.

Henry hesitates. "Do you want to . . . talk about it?" That's got to be why Eliza's here, right?

And yes, apparently that was the right thing to say because Eliza gives him another teary laugh and launches straight into it. "It was a lot of things, over a long time. He was just . . . he was a fun guy, and super hot amirite?"

"Sure," says Henry, because she seems to want an answer.

"But we were together for like six months and he still always put himself before me. Like last week, we were at dinner and he spilled his drink all over my dress and instead of apologizing he said—" and she lowers her voice in an approximation of Freddy's— "'That's a waste of a good Cabernet.'"

"A little insensitive," Henry agrees carefully.

"And the week before that, he made me late to brunch with my sister because he refused to get out of the bathroom until his swoop was gelled perfectly. It's just been like a crap-ton of little things for a long time. And then today I get on Instagram and I see he took this totes horrendous picture of me asleep—#mygirlfriendsleeping, I guess that's, like, a thing—and when I asked him to take it down he said no because it got 224 likes and that's a new record for him." She wipes at her nose. "I know you're going to think that's super vain of me and a stupid reason to break up—"

"I don't think that's super vain of you," Henry insists gently. He stares at her a long moment, indecisive, and then puts his hand tentatively on her shoulder (and wonders briefly if the possibility of doing this at some point is the reason he unconsciously chose to sit with his non-broken arm closest to her). "I don't think you overreacted." A smile pulls at her lips, and his pulse accelerates because over the last few months her smiles have been affecting him oddly. And all of this is why he doesn't address whether he thinks that's a good reason to break up; he knows that right now he's not really in a good position to advise her on this because there's kind of a conflict of interest here. He definitely supports her ending things with Freddy, but it's only partly because of the Instagram picture or anything else the man has done. He's been in favor of her ending things with Freddy ever since a surprisingly illuminating conversation with a handful of preteens at the local skate park last month.

But he tries to put those feelings aside and just be a supportive friend. "Taking and posting that picture without your permission is a violation of your trust and your privacy. And even if he claims he didn't know you'd be unhappy about it, he knows that know, and he still won't take it down. You're not being unreasonable."

Eliza looks earnestly at him for such a long moment that he starts getting nervous. Has he somehow revealed too much? Did that come off as more than just friendly advice? But then Eliza smiles again. "Thank you," she whispers, and wraps her arms around his waist, and he hopes she doesn't notice how he involuntarily inhales deeply, breathing in that scent that is Eliza. But then the hug is over and she's sitting back again, slipping back into her story. "So when he wouldn't take it down we got in this huge fight, and he was saying all this stuff, and then he said—" She closes her eyes, probably trying to fight back more tears.

"Do you want to talk about what he said?" Henry says, even more gently still.

"He . . . he made fun of my glasses."

That's not what Henry expected to hear.

"Well," Eliza amends, "what he actually said was, 'I've been supportive. I've put up with you wearing those dorky glasses around the apartment.' And I know that seems like NBD, but it is a big deal and he should know that. I've talked to him about this."

Henry has no idea what she's talking about now; like Freddy, he might have assumed that glasses are NBD (that's got to mean no big deal, right?), but he definitely wouldn't have made fun of them.

Eliza sighs. "So I . . . kind of yelled at him, and he yelled back, and I told him it was over and he insisted it wasn't and finally I just left." She shivers then—it's an unseasonably cold night and she's been out in it—and crosses to the linen closet to grab a blanket, and he can't help loving how well she knows her way around his house. Maybe someday, if he ever manages to be brave—

"So that's it," she says. "It's finally over." She returns to the couch and sprawls comfortably, her feet up on the coffee table (he doesn't bother telling her not to do that, because she'll forget and put them up there again in a moment anyway), sitting really very close to him. He reminds himself to breathe as her leg brushes against his, and then has to do it again when she spreads the blanket over herself and it ends up half over him as well.

"Are you . . . all right?" he asks finally.

Eliza hesitates, then smiles. "Yeah," she says. "I think that's actually been like a long time coming. The fight kind of freaked me out, but for reals, I'm okay." She snuggles down farther under the blanket. "So can I crash here tonight?"

"Of course," he says. "I'll take the couch and—"

"I'll take the couch," she says. "I already woke you up and made you listen to me complain about my boyfriend. I'm not kicking you out of your bed on top of that."

He should fight it, but he doesn't want to belittle her offer by refusing to accept it. So he simply sits a while, listening to the sound of her breathing next to him and trying not to get lost in thinking about the way her arm feels against his, and then asks carefully, "So what is the deal with the glasses?"

She blushes. "It's stupid," she says automatically, but then she shakes her head. "No, it's not, it's important."

She falls silent. "So . . ." Henry prompts after a moment.

She laughs a little. "After we talked to Corynn McWatters, I was thinking about it, and I realized, Corynn stole my story because she put me through some serious crap, and rising above it to find happiness and success? That's admirable. I'm . . . admirable."

Henry smiles, looking down at his hands in his lap. "Yes, you are."

Eliza nudges him with her shoulder, and when she's done she's somehow sitting much closer to him than she was before. "So I decided I needed to start embracing . . . me. Stop being so ashamed of who I really am . . . including awkward middle school me. And awkward middle school me needs these glasses to see at night." She pauses. "Hot present-day me needs them too, actually."

Henry laughs.

"So I started wearing my old glasses around my apartment, and I cut my hair, and I told Freddy that I was trying to, you know, come to terms with my past. It's, like, symbolic, right? And he was cool with it at first but he started kind of complaining about how he missed my old hair, and then he'd kind of make fun of me sometimes about the glasses. And so finally, tonight when he said that thing about my glasses, I said that it's part of who I used to be, and he said that who I used to be was kind of a loser."

Henry winces, and Eliza gives him a grateful look. "Right?" she demands. "And I realized . . ." She trails off, her eyes fixed on his knees as though embarrassed to meet his eyes. "Like, I'm already mean enough to myself about it. I don't need to be practically living with a guy who does the same thing. And then that plus the fact that I'd finally realized that he has his head stuck too far up his own butt to really care about me . . ."

He hates it when she uses that phrase, but it seems very fitting here. "So you decided to move on," he finishes.

"Well, yeah," she says. The traces of the tears she shed earlier are all but gone now. "Like, having a boyfriend is great and stuff, but I decided that it's not so important to me that I'll put up with being treated badly just so I can keep this guy around."

And Henry looks at her, and then he smiles, his biggest smile tonight. "I'm really proud of you," he says.

And Eliza positively glows.

"Seriously," Henry says. "I mean, this seems like a big moment for you. And not just the Freddy thing—you not running from your past anymore." He gives her a half smile. "I could probably learn something from you about that."

"You mean, come to terms with the fact that you never could really skateboard?" Eliza grins and motions at his broken arm. "Looks like you already kind of did that."

At that Henry laughs, and without thinking he puts his arm around Eliza's shoulders. "Really, I'm proud of you," he repeats. "And I'm happy you're happy."

Eliza turns to look at him. "Yeah," she smiles, "I am happy." And then she snuggles closer to his side, pulling off her glasses and setting them on the back of the couch so she can comfortably lay her head on his shoulder. Not exactly what he intended to have happen, but he's definitely not going to complain.

They sit there in silence for a while, until a yawn nearly splits Eliza's skull. "I should let you get to sleep," Henry says.

"No, stay," she says, even though her voice has started to sound slurred. "I'm not sleepy."

That's ridiculous, of course she is, but he can't make himself move. He doesn't often get to touch Eliza this much, and now that Freddy's out of the picture . . . Not that he's going to try anything tonight, or for a while for that matter—she did just go through a breakup, and even though she seems happy about it, he's going to give her some time to process it. So for tonight he's just being supportive.

"Henry?" Eliza says from where her head rests on his shoulder. "If we'd met when we were younger, do you think we would have been friends?"

"Well," says Henry, "I was starting college when you were in the first grade. So . . ."

"You know what I mean. Pretend we'd been the same age." She yawns, then continues. "If we'd met in like the seventh grade. Do you think we'd be friends?"

"You mean the Most Butt girl in school and the nerdy Korean boy who told his classmates he skateboarded so that they'd think he was cool? Which didn't work, by the way." And it's a bit of a silly exercise; they couldn't have been in the same grade. It's impossible. But because Eliza makes him do whimsical things he wouldn't have done otherwise, because the feeling of her pressed up against his side makes him believe in all sorts of possibilities, Henry imagines it. He imagines a bespectacled, frizzy-haired young Eliza sharing the middle school hallways with a fastidious, bow-tied young Henry. He imagines them paired up as lab partners in biology because none of the other kids will talk to them. He imagines seeing in her the caring, sharp-witted, remarkable woman that he has the privilege of knowing now. He imagines them drawn together then, as now, because they make each other laugh and inspire each other to grow and improve. He imagines them sitting in the lunch room—not eating over the garbage can or hurrying away to the library to hide the fact that they're alone, but actually sitting together at a lunch table, alone except for each other's company, Henry and Eliza against the world. And he smiles.

Beside him Eliza's breathing has evened out into the deep patterns of sleep, and he presses his lips to the top of her head but makes no other effort to move. "Yes, Eliza," he says to the silence, "I think we would have been friends."

. . . . . .


End file.
